Juniper bushes love work. They love the look in your eyes, when you first arrive at them with all that determination and gumption set on a face with that squared jaw defiance!

"You are going down. I am master of my domain and you are a mangy old ground bush. I've got superior leverage with my tools and superior intelligence with my big honking brain. I've been staring at your ugly form for four years, but today it ends. The line is draw, the count is in and your sorry behind is coming out of that well cultivated ground. I don't care how big you think you are, how deep your roots go, how allergic I am to your bark or how many spiders you send crawling up my sleeve, today you are coming out!"

"You think so bub? Bring it."

They especially love it when you collapse in a rumbled heap at their base, with your pulse sounding loudly in you ears over the din of your mp3 player, sweating profusely and shaking your head after three hours of hard labor. They really get a kick out of that.

"You think this is over?! You think I'm done? So my clothes are soiled my shirt is dripping wet and my palms look like the scene of a sandpaper attack army. I'm not letting you win again!"

"Are you going to start trying now? I think one of my two thousand twenty five roots might have wiggled a bit on your last attempt. I totally liked the part where you were jumping up and down on my main limb like it was a freaking trampoline."

"I still don't get why that didn't work..."

"Did you see the look your neighbors gave you?"

"No, my vision is impaired by my lack of oxygen. I'll I can see are shadows."

"Ah. Well then, are you ready to call it a day then?"

"You wish!"

Gotcha! Now all's that left is digging out the root ball (under the rock in the corner)... Maybe next year...

Sometimes I refind a post after a couple of years, and like it enough to repost. This is just such a post. Enjoy, this Kludge Classic!

Over the 4th of July a number of us went to Spring Lake and had a picnic. It was nice, I got some sun, Dew and fried chicken. I also gained a valuable bit of information. Frisbees do not follow directions well, and they seem to have a nasty bent on making people suffer. I can only conclude that Frisbees are evil.

My Father-in-law is a very nice man, but even he is unable to correct the evil nature of these discs! While we were playing a seemingly happy game the disc attacked the group of female spectators for no apparent reason. It was particularly interested in the younglings. It identified the smallest baby and flew at it. Luckily the women deflected it. Back in the hands of my father-in-law the Frisbee again wielded its power and went back to the babies for revenge. My father-in-law was rebuked, which is what the evil saucer was really after.

My Frisbee is manic depressive. I can only attribute this to the design on the top. It’s a yellow disc with a large smiling face. It’s hard to be evil with a large smiling face on your top. We would get an hour or so of very nice behavior followed by thirty minutes of sheer terror. Flying at small dogs, children playing, or people sitting on park benches minding their own business. It also tried to make me go into the woman's restroom half a dozen times or so to retrieve it. Luckily Frisbees aren’t good at corners. It’s hard to guess what a Frisbee is thinking, but it can’t be happy thoughts.

One of the players stopped the Frisbee, that I had thrown, from knocking all the teeth out of his little girls head. This was done quite expertly, and in just the nick of time. I had no evil in my heart when I tossed the toy, but it knew exactly what it wanted. Costly dental X-rays. Evil Frisbees are so like that.

Last night the remote went missing. Not just the simple, "where the heck did I put that thing?" You know what I'm talking about, you get up, turn around twice and there it is, right next where you were sitting, "must have slid off the sofa arm or something."

This was nothing like that! This was an all out loss. I stood up turned around twice and looked in by the sofa arm. Nothing. I checked over, under around and even rummaged through the cushions. I got down on all fours like some feral remote hunting beast pushing toys and stuffed lions aside. Nothing. No power. No remote. I was helpless. Adrift all the while the paused image of my show stood a mere eight feet away beckoning me,

"Don't you want to see how this ends?""YEs! Of CourRSe I DO!""Well, then. Lets get to it bub!"

What's a guy to do. Sure I could hit the pause button the DVD player itself like some blithering Neanderthal, but what's the point. I wouldn't solve the problem. The REMOTE WAS LOST. It was probably just as scared and worried as I was. It needed me, and I needed it. We formed a kind of symbiosis. Apart we are weak, together we can stem the tide.

So I left the room, and walked back in. And there it was. Sitting pretty on the sofa arm.

"I was here along." "No. I'm happy to find you but I know better."

I knew instantly what had happened. Aliens. Rookie aliens understudies. Clearly when the aliens had come by, frozen time and scanned the brains of all the humans on my street, they had some form of rookie fly along program. For all aspiring slimys looking for a career with decent hours and interactions with foreign bodies. Mostly they are just there to observe, sometimes hold the bags scanning equipment is stored in and clean up the slime trails. This one got foolish.

Imagine the surprise of the journeymen level brain infiltration services expert when he saw with this sticky young pup had done! Allow me to translate!

Due to some rushed math there was a couple minute blip where I existed on a planet without my remote. Too bad I'm not one to believe in my own shortcomings, silly aliens.

I imagine that junior understudy will get quiet a slimy pouchful from the master level brain infiltration director. Whoa! If I could be a pile of ectogoo on that wall. Anyway. It's good to know even aliens make mistakes.